Other people were asking what steered Graves towards the Stumpy instead of the Enduro?

Jared Graves: “mostly geometry. The Head angle with a 160mm fork is actually slacker than the enduro, The stumpy frame fits me slightly better, The BB is lower. And the 135mm travel, while not always enough travel for racing on the really rough stuff makes up for it on the smoother pedally sections/stages. A fast bike is all about balance!”

He elaborated: “every 10mm in fork length will get you an extra .5 degree in the head angle, Plus as the website specs go, the bike comes with a Purgatory rear tire, which is slightly higher volume than the 2.3 Butcher I used, which accounts for approx .2 degree at the head angle, then the custom yoke could be a touch shorter, but dont quote me on that. all I know is that I measured the HA with 2 different angle finders and it came to 65.9 on both”

When asked about his choice of G2 rotors instead of Centreline rotors (see? told you the audience was thoughtful!) Graces explained: “theres a little more surface area on the G2 for potentially slightly more braking power, Being new to SRAM this year I started using them on Curtis’s feedback. And I like them a lot.”

The inevitable key question of 29 vs 27.5 came up.

Jared: “I instantly loved the high speed stability of 29, while modern bike geo doesnt negatively effect the handling, so it was almost a win/win. the only downside of 29 is I find that with DH casing tires, there is a lot of weight at the outside of the wheels that negatively effects quick handling. I find the point of a tire becoming slow and weird handling (in the front atleast) to be at about 1200 grams. It doesnt necessarily mean its a bad thing, it just takes some time to adjust.”